


Everlong

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One month after Cuba. Angst, love, maybe some hope, at the end, if you look hard for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everlong

**Author's Note:**

> Title and closing lines from the Foo Fighters' "Everlong." (The working title for this story was “Lace and Paper Flowers,” from the Fleetwood Mac song “Gypsy": "and it all comes down to you/ well you knew that it does/ and lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice/ oh, and it lights up your life…”)

It’d been almost a month, a month after a beach and a submarine and a coin and the day that changed the world. Erik had never taken off the helmet, even to sleep. Not that he'd been sleeping much, these days. He’d been hiding from something (someone) very specific.  
             
He never had wept, even at night. That grief was far too apocalyptic for tears.  
             
He had gathered supporters. More of them had turned up every day, disillusioned, angry, sick and tired of the need to conceal their true selves. They’d been living in an old military compound out in California, in the desert, where the sky at night stretched open and black and empty. Abandoned and rusting metal walls hummed when he walked by and sang when he touched them.  
  
Waking up in the morning, these days, Erik could never remember his dreams of the night before.  
             
He watched his recruits train in the open space in the middle of the compound, facing off against each other. To Erik’s perhaps overly critical eye, they seemed unpracticed and sloppy, but they also looked joyful, freed to use their powers, dedicated to a purpose. He’d given them that.  
             
Two of the newest arrivals walked past him, talking, and the wind brought him their words.  
             
“…you were at the Xavier place, huh?”  
             
“Yeah. This is better, right? I mean, he’s impressive and all, but really, a guy in a wheelchair, what’s he know about defending people?”  
             
“I heard he can get in your head. Make you do whatever he wants.”  
             
“Nah. Never saw him do much of anything. Just talk. Sit in that wheelchair. Say hello in your head, maybe.”  
             
“Huh. Better here.”  
             
“Yeah...”  
             
They turned the corner, voices trailing off. Erik was frozen to the spot.  
             
 _Charles—?_ He’d known Charles was hurt, badly hurt, even, but… _Did I—they couldn’t—_ He hadn’t known. He hadn’t been there. It struck him like a knife to the chest, only worse, because Erik _had_ once been stabbed in the chest and that was nothing at all compared to this.  
             
He’d needed to hide from Charles and from his own guilt. Somehow he’d never thought that Charles might need _him_ , might be sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by students and utterly alone, because Charles took care of everyone except himself, always. Charles the optimist, always wanting the best for people.  
             
Was he still? Or had Erik broken that in him, as well?  
             
He scribbled a note for Raven, plucked the fastest of the motorcycles out of the shed, and vanished eastward.  
   
  
  
It was raining when he arrived, fat heavy drops that echoed off the helmet and bounced down inside Erik’s leather jacket and made his skin crawl with cold. He ignored the dampness, left the bike concealed a mile down the road, and walked the rest of the way.  
             
The only security was an easily-dealt-with fence. Erik made short work of scaling it, and thought, _Oh, Charles…_  
             
Most of the mansion sat dark, with closed windows; it was, after all, the middle of the night. Most students would be in bed.  
             
The windows of Charles’s rooms on the second floor were dark as well, but one light glimmered on the ground floor, and Erik caught a glimpse of bookshelves, the arm of a couch, a table that he recognized.  
             
Of course Charles would be on the ground floor now. The rain stung Erik’s face like tears. It hurt. He deserved it.  
             
He lurked in the bushes outside Charles’s window, feeling like a trespasser, a voyeur, anathema, and watched the lighted room.  
             
Charles was sitting at his desk, not quite facing the window; lamplight and firelight played symphonies on the curved metal bones of his wheelchair. He was alternately reading, and making notes on the paper next to him; after a minute he set down his pen, and ran a hand through his hair, tiredly. It was a gesture Erik had seen a million times before. This time it broke his heart into tiny pieces.  
             
Cold water slid down his back from the rooftop gutters. He was mesmerized.  
             
Charles picked his pen again, sighed, set it down. Tapped his book with a finger, as if thinking about it. Some new scientific study? Gene therapy? Mutation? Erik didn’t know, and he wanted to know. Wanted to sit across the table and watch Charles get excited about DNA and transmission and protein structures and every other detail at which a nonprofessor like Erik could only nod.  
             
Lightning cracked outside. Close. Charles looked up, startled, and saw him.  
             
The rain chose that moment to get louder, as if making its feelings known.  
             
Erik blinked away the afterglare of the lightning, and heard Charles say, “Erik, please come in.”  
             
He should go. He should leave, before he hurt Charles any more. Nothing had changed between them, not really. Not the good or the bad.  
             
He slid in through Charles’s window and managed to land on the carpet without disturbing any of the organized piles on the desk. Charles raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.”  
             
Erik gazed at him, real and in person, wounded and alive and two feet away, and couldn’t think of the right words for all the things he wanted to say. He settled for, “You should lock your windows.”  
             
“Oh, really, Erik, as if that would keep you out.” Charles waved a hand at the couch. “Sit down?”  
             
It was a request, not an order, but Erik still managed to say, “No…thank you…” He saw the flash of hurt in Charles’s eyes, and mentally cursed himself. How could he explain that he did not want to place his wet and muddy self on Charles’s comfortable sofa, and thereby ruin something else in Charles’s life?  
             
He stood in a puddle of dripping rainwater and watched Charles watching him, and felt out of place, too awkward, too tall, as he loomed over the wheelchair.  
             
“Tea?”  
             
“…what?…oh…Yes. All right.”  
             
“Here.” Charles handed over a mug; their fingers brushed. “If you want food, you’ll have to go find the kitchen on your own, I’m afraid. I ate the last scone about an hour ago.”  
             
“Charles…” Erik clung helplessly to his mug. The heat distracted him from the lingering feel of Charles’s fingertips. How could Charles be so calm? Why wasn’t he angry? He sat there in the wheelchair that Erik had put him in, and offered tea and apologized for a lack of scones, and Erik wanted to explode with fury at the injustice of it.  
             
It should be him in the chair, not Charles, whose only crime lay in wanting to stop a war. In persisting in the belief that the world was good, at heart, and worth saving.  
             
Steam wafted up from the mug and made his face warm. Behind him, the fire crackled peacefully. Outside the rain kept falling.  
             
Charles took a sip of his own tea, and looked up at Erik. “Is everything all right? How is Raven?”  
             
“She’s fine…she’s doing wonderfully. She makes friends easily." More easily than Erik himself, not that he was going to admit to that. "She’s mastered shifting her voice to match her appearance, as well…”  
             
“Brilliant! She does it by altering the cellular structure of her vocal chords?”  
             
“I…don’t really know…”  
             
“Oh, of course. Well, tell her I miss her, but it seems as though she’s happy.” Charles took another sip, and eyed Erik over the rim of his mug. “Are _you_ all right, my friend?”  
             
Erik almost dropped his tea. Only his reflexes, and the panicked desire not to break anything else of Charles’s, rescued it. “Don’t call me—I’m not—”  
             
“Aren’t you?”  
             
Erik shoved his mug onto Charles’s desk, dropped to his knees next to the wheelchair, forgetting about the mud and the carpet. Yanked the helmet off, and looked up into blue eyes. _Charles I’m sorry I’m so sorry I didn’t know—_  
 _  
Erik, it’s all right_. Charles’s voice was calm, reassuring, but under that just a bit shaky, as if he was having a hard time controlling hidden emotions. What emotions? Anger, relief, pain? Love? Erik could remember a time when Charles hid nothing from him, and it felt like an accusation.  
             
 _No_. Charles smiled, just a little bit. _I’m just better at shielding, these days. It’s a habit, with all the children around. Here—_ and abruptly all those barriers were gone, nothing left but Erik and Charles himself, ruefulness and acceptance and optimism tinged with regret and unconditional forgiveness and absolute love. After a minute Erik felt something damp against his eyelashes. Rainwater. No. Tears. They were reflected in Charles’s eyes too.  
             
 _How can you forgive me? How can you still love me?_ And, deeper, _You know I would take this back if I could._ He would. Instantly. _But I can’t change what I believe. What I know is right_.  
             
 _Neither of us can. And as for whether I can love you, Erik—do you still love me?_  
 _  
Always!_  
 _  
So here we are._  
 _  
It’s not fair._  
 _  
Oh, Erik…I thought I was supposed to be the optimist._  
             
Erik, caught in a tangle between laughter and tears, collapsed onto the floor and slumped against Charles’s wheelchair. The metal hummed quietly to him, and Charles rested a hand on his shoulder. _I love you._ He wasn’t sure which of them thought it. Either way it was true.  
             
The moment stretched out between them, an entire lifetime of warmth and lazy firelight and completely imperfect bittersweet perfection.  
             
After a while, Charles said, “Do you still prefer to play black? Or would you rather have white, and make the first move?”  
             
Erik looked up. “You—are you asking if I want to play chess?”  
             
Charles grinned. “For now.”  
             
“You know I’ll have to be gone in the morning…”  
             
“I know.” _If this is as much as we can have, I’ll take it, gladly._ Erik wasn’t sure which of them thought that one, either. Again, it didn’t matter.  
             
“I think,” Erik said, and carefully laced his fingers through Charles’s, “I might be in the mood to play white, tonight. If you don’t mind. I think…I could probably handle making the first move.”  
  
 

 

  
_and I wonder_   
_when I sing along with you_   
_if anything could ever feel this real forever_   
_if anything could ever be this good again_   
_the only thing I’ll ever ask of you_   
_you’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when_


End file.
